A Permanent Small Business Rates Relief Scheme

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:23 pm on 13 December 2017.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 3:23, 13 December 2017

I thank Adam Price for those additional questions. Llywydd, it is 70 per cent of business premises in Wales that have help with their rate bills, and more than half of those pay no rates at all. It isn't 70 per cent of small businesses. It's 70 per cent of all businesses. That's why the vast bulk—I would say it's hard to find small businesses that do not benefit from the help that is provided here in Wales, and what we've announced today is that that help is a permanent source of help, not, as Members here will know, a scheme that has had to be brought in front of the Assembly every year with no certainty that it would be available in the year after.

The Member is right to say that I am not proposing, in the changes that we are making today, to change thresholds or indeed to introduce a split multiplier. The idea of a split multiplier was quite heavily opposed in the consultation that we had on changing the small business rate relief scheme. There was a strong sense in that that the fact that we have a single multiplier in Wales is one of the things that helps us to attract people to set up businesses here. I'm very pleased, though, to confirm that the high-street rate relief scheme that we agreed with Plaid Cymru last year on a one-off basis—that we're able to find £5 million to extend that for a further year. It will be half of the amount that we were able to offer in this year, but it will allow high-street businesses to have further help into 2018-19. I'm glad to confirm as well that this package will allow us to provide extra help in the small-hydro area, and detailed discussions are now going on by policy officials with the sector to design that help in the most effective way.

Llywydd, Adam Price is correct to point out that, in the information that we've published today, I also set out a series of ideas that we want to go on exploring. The fact that we are committed to a permanent scheme—there will always be a scheme—should not be confused with a belief that the scheme we have today will never be changed in the future. There are many ways in which I think the scheme could be usefully further developed. Amongst the ideas—and they are ideas for discussion with the sector—are a series of ideas coming out of the Barclay review of business rates, undertaken in Scotland this year, and the idea, which has been developed in Scotland already, although not completely implemented, of linking the help that businesses get from the public purse with key objectives of public policy. How we would do that: certainly the economic action plan that was published yesterday has some ways in which we might be able to link that, and the work being carried out by the fair work board in Wales might provide another series of ways in which we could link the payments that companies get from the public purse with being confident that they conduct their business in ways that are consistent with our policy objectives.